Inside a Prague Brothel, Where Sex Is Free If You Perform for the Web

The Polar Bear room. A pool-like "bed" guarded by a roaring polar bear is equipped with a telephone just like the other rooms. The camera operators in the control room on the fourth floor sometimes give a call with instructions during intercourse, asking the prostitute to position herself at a better angle for one of the cameras. Photo: Hana Jakrlova

In her book Big Sister, photographer Hana Jakrlova explores an internet sex club in Prague where the clients get to have sex for free as long as they agree to let their exploits be filmed and broadcast live across the web.

“To me it seems like an extreme example of what is happening to all of us in this internet age,” says Jakrlova, who splits her time between Prague and New York. “There is an absurdity where some people have to have it online to have it become real or exciting.”

Beyond making her struggle with the notion of over-sharing, Jakrlova says the project also challenged her as a photographer and as a woman. While the johns always seemed to behave themselves, she says the acts that played out were hard to be around. Prostitution is legal in the Czech Republic, but that doesn’t make it any less exploitative, she says.

“I was battling certain feelings of guilt, sort of like a war photographer,” she says. “Are you a witness or are you going to be the one who throws away the camera and is going to help the person who is wounded.”

The book is titled after the name of the club, Big Sister, which closed in 2010. Most of the photos were taken between 2006 and 2007. Jakrlova says not all the interactions she witnessed at the club felt staged. There were moments of real affection between the clients and prostitutes, but the fact that those moments were broadcast online always qualified and relativized them, she says.

“There were real moments of humanity,” she says. “But overall I found it quite depressing.”

Several of her other photos also make clear how much the web cameras stick out. There is no attempt to hide or disguise them and instead they become part of the scene. The cameras are not only characters in the action, they also redefine the definition of client and prostitute, says Jakrlova.

Because the internet viewers are the only ones who are financially involved, it changes their role in the relationship, she says. In many ways it makes the viewers the johns and makes the real johns part of the prostitution.

“Hopefully the viewers of my work will go beyond the fact that I just photographed prostitution because that was not the reason I did it,” Jakrlova says. “This explores a lot of issues including who is the prostitute and the prostitutee.”

For Jakrlova, this type of service is indicative of a larger, ominous trend of broadcasting more and more intimacies across the globe via the internet.

“I really do believe that instead of enhancing our lives, the process of sharing online is banalizing our experiences to a certain degree. It takes a conscious effort certainly on my part to be not be wrapped into it and to keep perspective. The virtual world in my opinion will always be secondary. Like the Buddhists say, ‘Here, now.'”

In her new project, Jakrlova says she’s continuing her exploration of how sharing affects the way we experience a moment. The project consists of pasting multiple but altered copies of a single photo side by side, creating a whole new aesthetic. For her it represents the importance people place on sharing an experience instead of engaging with it.

“Some of us forget to pay attention to the original moment,” she says. “And therefore we risk losing the authentic slice of reality.”